How to Braid in Hair Weaves

Ever wonder how Tyra Banks gets that fabulous hair? It's not always a wig. A method of applying hair extensions that has been popular in African-American circles for decades is one that's getting increased interest: Weaving. Nope, that's not a highlight I'm talking about. It's a method of installing extensions.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Hair pieces, human hair or synthetic.
• Curved needle and thick thread that matches your hair.
• Braiding skills
• Time and patience

1. Hair weaving, involves attaching some additional hair to your own to achieve either fullness or length (or both!). Your first step is to section off the top part of your hair so it's away from the braiding. Now take a very thin horizontal parting starting at least an inch from each temple. Make it go around the whole head.

2. 
   Smaller is better!

   Now starting from either side, do a very tight, very narrow "corn row" braid. This is going to be the platform for your hair addition.

3. 

   Now thread your needle and comb out your hair piece so it's completely untangled. What you're going to do is sew it onto the braid. Start in the middle of the back so you have it spaced easily. Use a "whip stitch" to basically do a running stitch through the hair piece and into the braid.

4. Now you just repeat, over and over and over. The best bet is to start about 2" up from your lower hairline, leave an little bit of hair between them, then do another row. Build row up on row until you're at the top of the head. When you let the top hair back down, it will cover the braids and you'll have fuller, gorgeous hair!

5. These will only last as long as the braids do. As your hair grows out, the extensions will get farther and farther away from your scalp. Most people can keep weaves in for about 2 months. If you use human hair, you can wash, style, curl, flat iron...whatever you want.

Tips & Warnings

• Estimating the amount of hair you'll need is tricky, buy more than you need you can always return the extra.
• A beauty supply store will sell what you need
• You can find wonderful "weave-ologists" in your phone book (they don't have to be fully licensed hair stylists either).
• Keeping these up requires maintenance
• They can be hard on a sensitive scalp.

[msmabry]

on 5/20/2009 Informative article on how braid in hair weaves. 5*

[showpup]

on 3/11/2009 So that's how hair extensions go in. Genius!